Lyndon Johnson articulated it in its purest, as well as its crassest, form when, in 1964, he remarked to two like-minded Democratic governors that with his Great Society programs, “I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” -Roger Kimball

President Truman’s civil rights program “is a farce and a sham–an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I have voted against the so-called poll tax repeal bill. . .. I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill.” –Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1948

Mr. Dallek quotes him defending the Supreme Court appointment of the very well-known Thurgood Marshall, rather than a black judge less identified with the civil rights cause, by saying to a staff member, "Son, when I appoint a nig--r to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nig--r."

Johnson publicly vowed that he sought no wider war, Ellsberg recalled, a message that played out in the 1964 presidential campaign as LBJ portrayed himself as the peacemaker against the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater. Meantime, his administration manipulated South Vietnam into asking for U.S. combat troops and responded to phantom provocations from North Vietnam with stepped-up force. "It couldn't have been a more dramatic fraud," Ellsberg said. "Everything the president said was false during the campaign."